Best PDF Creator/Editor/Converter Tools

Portable Document Format (PDF) is one of the most popular document formats especially when sharing documents across multiple platforms. This is because the PDF file will be displayed the same on any platform you open it on. Other document formats like doc, docx etc. are dependent on certain resources to be present on the target computer to display the document properly. For example, if a font is used in the document isn’t available in the target computer, the document won’t open properly.

This is not the case with PDF. Only a PDF reader is required to open the PDF file and it doesn’t require anything else. The problem with PDF is that most of the PDF readers are only able to read the PDF files but not write or convert any document to PDF format. All the popular PDF converters/writers are paid ones.

Looking for the best PDF Converter

I wanted to convert a few PDF files and was looking for a good PDF converter. First I tried Microsoft Word 2013 which gives a very nice option to open and edit PDF files and even save them back to PDF format. But there are some occasions where Word fails to convert the files properly. This is where a professional tool is required to do the job of conversion.

I downloaded a trial license of Able2Extract PDF converter and some other competitor products so that I could compare all of the top products. Here are the products that I will be comparing:

Although these products are premium products and contain a lot of features which are unique to themselves, I want buy the one which costs reasonably and has all the features I want. I want to have a PDF conversion feature which is able to convert to many formats, easy to use, supports forms, video/sound embedding, OCR, editing watermarks, mobile optimized and has great support.

Comparing the best of the best

Here’s the summary of the feature and price comparison which I have been able to do:

[table id=1 /]

The following factors were taken into consideration when grading Support:

Online help including forums etc.

User manuals

Getting started or working with the product tutorials

Live chat

Email/phone support

Ease of use was how I was able to convert/edit/create PDF files on that specific software. This can vary among different people.

Finally the best!

I would also have preferred Adobe Acrobat Pro but the price let me down as Acrobat Pro is the most feature rich among all the compared apps but it’s way too costly as compared with the competitors. The price is an overkill for such a product.

At the end, I have chosen Able2Extract PDF Converter as my primary PDF creator/editor/converter program as it was the cheapest of all while it had almost all the qualities and features that are necessary for this type of software.

Do you work on PDF files? Which tool do you use for editing and converting PDF files?

When I looked at the topic, I thought it would be a very detailed comparison. The chart is good but it would be great if you could explain each option separately. Another thing that’s missing is the compatibility of each software with Windows 10 or Windows 8 or Windows 7 or even Windows XP?

I don’t think there is no free software or service which provides nearly all or even some essential features of these products you have mentioned. But you can always use multiple software/services for the purpose you are trying to achieve.

For example, you can make use of Cute PDF Writer or 7-PDF Maker to print/convert documents into PDF.http://www.cutepdf.com/

Thanks for your quick response. Actually I wanted to change my style to something more visual. I will try to add some graphics in the comparisons next time. I think it’s easier for people to have a bird’s eye view over the whole feature set of each software compared. The last platform gives an indication of the program’s compatibility with a specific Operating System. Yes it’ll take some time to verify that each program works on which versions of Windows. But it should be understood that the latest update of the software should work with the latest final release of the Operating System.